


Never Have I Ever

by fandumbandflummery



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Best Friends, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Drinking Games, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Implied Sexual Content, Past Drug Use, Teenagers, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 04:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12183072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandumbandflummery/pseuds/fandumbandflummery
Summary: At some point in the last year and a half, he'd crossed that invisible boundary from 'kid' to...if not a 'man', than at least to a 'guy' in her eyes.





	Never Have I Ever

**Author's Note:**

> The more I watch Rebels, the more I'm still conflicted about either straight-up shipping these two or preferring them as BFFs. 
> 
> I wanted to try something different this time - writing slightly younger characters than usual, and writing them being as, well, as teenagers are wont to be. 
> 
> As for timeline, call this taking place anytime between the start of season 3 and "Trial of the Darksaber". 
> 
> Although I personally don't think this is terribly lurid stuff, I added the Underage warning just in case. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, and I apologize in advance for any glaring grammatical errors that I might've left in.

Sabine trailed her fingers through the powdery white sand, drawing patterns with her fingertips. 

The Ghost might be her home, but Atollon was starting to feel almost as familiar; and comforting, in a way. It was a beautiful world in its own bizarre way, and provided one kept their guard up for the wildlife, it had plenty of interesting places to explore. Today was a nice enough day to do just that, the summer sky clear of clouds and the air mercifully free of blowing dust for once. 

Definitely way too nice to spend stuck inside a ship. 

Especially when being inside a ship put one in proximity to sadistic astromechs who thought it was funny to chase the stupid young organics around the cargo bay with his electro-prod charged, or grumpy Lasats who wanted some 'bloody well peace and quiet for once without you lot bangin' around.' Or, to wayward Jedi and twi'lek pilots who were using a rare quiet day at the base to 'spend some time together' as they'd always put it to their two youngest crewmembers. 

Alone. In Kanan's cabin. With the door locked. And Chopper standing guard.

It was honestly kind of hilarious how Hera and Kanan probably still thought she and Ezra assumed they were just hanging out, relaxing, or discussing battle plans, and totally Not Having Sex. 

That as much as the weather was why she and Ezra had decided to act on the perfectly sensible idea to go for a bit of a hike beyond the perimeter fence, before the Force's connection between him and Kanan informed him a bit too much about his master's less-than-civilized feelings and urges. So they'd tossed some essential gear into their packs and made themselves scarce among Atollon's endless maze of canyons and 

Stretching, Sabine scratched an itch on one bare arms. In the absence of any real threat of an attack Imperials or otherwise, she'd forgone most of her armour for once, and was clad only in her one short-sleeved shirt and her spare pants. In any case, she still kept her twin pistols holstered at her waist and a couple of knives in her boots, in case of any surprise incursions by the krykna or whatever else lived out here, this far outside their defensive perimeter. Ezra had his own sidearm for defense, plus his now ever-present lightsabre. 

The weapon reminded her of how Ezra was taking his patchwork Jedi training more seriously than ever, at least where sabre form and combat skills were concerned. Whatever Kanan had been putting him through had paid off, as she'd seen whenever they'd ended up trailed or cornered by any particularly persistent or stupid Imperials on planet-side missions. 

Sabine still beat him in plenty of friendly sparring matches, of course - she was Mando'ade, and she'd lived and breathed battle almost from when she'd been old enough to walk - the advantage was almost unfair whenever she duelled with other younger rebels. Still, Ezra was improving, bit by bit, day by day, and his surprising strength and whirlwind speed was now a challenge for her even on her best days. He knew it himself, too, unable to resist showing his ever-increasing agility and power off a little even as they'd picked their way through Atollon's wilderness. While Sabine had been forced to clamber awkwardly over boulders, or been forced to take the long way around rocks she couldn't scale, Ezra was Force-leaping between the tops of the stony gorges as lightly as a loth-cats of his homeworld. 

Eventually though, fatigue had finally caught up with both of them.They'd retreated from the blazing noontime sun to the shade of a gnarled ancient coral-tree to rest before making the trek back to base once the sun wasn't so harsh. 

Pausing in her impromptu sand-sketches, Sabine cast a sidelong glaze at Ezra lying on his back, arms folded as he watched the convors flitter about the high branches. He lay very still, breathing softly and deeply, with his eyes were half-closed. It was oddly fascinating to watch him seem both completely at rest, yet awake and alert, constantly listening and watching everything. Ezra was so rarely still apart from when he was asleep, so Sabine figured she could be forgiven for staring a bit here and now. 

Her earlier note that Kanan's training regime, not to mention time and the rigours of nearly three and a half years of war had changed Ezra seemed the more obvious now, least of all because he'd shot up about a foot in height and packed on what had to be ten pounds of muscle alone. He was still slim, and with the new length in his legs and arms he bordered on gangly at times. Still, something else in his overall build had subtly but surely altered. All her artistic language of proportion and scale seemed to desert her, whenever she tried to describe just what had changed in Ezra. There was a new broadness to his chest and back, a thickness in his neck and shoulders and arms that she *felt* more than she saw whenever they wrestled or sparred without their usual layers of outer clothing. The angles of his face somehow seemed sharper, his jaw seemed more square, even his nose somehow seemed to have changed shape. None of this she really noticed on a day-to-day basis, but it seemed so obvious now that she had time to *look*. At some point in the last year and a half, he'd crossed that invisible boundary from 'kid' to, if not a 'man', than at least to a 'guy' in her eyes. 

Suddenly, a dull, gurgling roar interrupted her thoughts about just what that might mean.

Ezra snapped out of his trance, going from prone on his back to a stance like a nexu crouched to pounce, ready to leap to his feet against whatever monstrous thing threatened them. His hand stopped halfway to drawing his sabre as his eyes cast wildly around the clearing. 

For a moment, he seemed very confused by the apparent invisibility of his enemy. Then he gave a mortified down look at his stomach as it let out another growl. 

Sabine couldn't stifle her snort of laughter. Jedi-to-be or not, Ezra was still a teenage boy, and still had plenty of awkwardness to temper the natural majesty that the warrior-monks of old supposedly had. 

"I've got some ration bars in my bag to quiet that rancor in your belly down, if you want." 

"Please," he muttered with a bashful look, accepting the handful of flimsi-wrapped bars she passed him. 

She kept one for herself, chewing slowly on the flavourless yet filling morsel. Slowly, at least; compared to how Ezra inhaled the three bars she'd given him. It was still astonishing to Sabine just how much he ate, even before the growth spurt. And how fast - within a few minutes all the bars had been demolished, the wrappers crumpled up and stuffed into his pocket. With a satisfied sigh, he flopped backwards again, stretching as his arms crossed behind his head. 

"Thanks for that," he murmured, letting his eyes wander back up to the canopy and drift half-shut as he began to slip into trance once more. 

As he did so, his shirt rode up, exposing a flash of bare skin on his stomach. Sabine muttered a 'welcome', as she looked away for a moment, pretending to watch the dokmas shuffling in the dirt on a nearby hillside, and tried to ignore the burning in her cheeks. 

That was a rather awkward side effect of his growth. At least, to her it was. Ezra himself barely seemed to notice that almost overnight, all his shirts had become just this side of too short. Whenever he went without his jacket, all too often she found herself staring at that kriffing strip of skin that showed between the hem of his shirt and his belt whenever he stretched or reached for something. 

She didn't even have to look, now; to remember what it looked like. Warm golden skin, surprisingly smooth and free of scars, just ever-so-slightly paler than the rest of him, bracketed by sharp hipbones that carved downwards in a deep V, before disappearing under his belt. 

It wasn't like she'd never seen him at least partly-undressed before. Medics and droids had to cut or strip his clothes away to deal with his injuries often enough, and honestly, when they stood in line for the ship's 'fresher on the days when they had enough water stored for each of them to have a real shower, none of them ever waited fully dressed. He'd probably seen Sabine in her bra and shorts as many times as she'd seen him shirtless. 

Somehow, though, that little peek always managed to hijack her attention every time it appeared, and drove her thoughts to places she wasn't quite sure she wanted them to go. Namely to speculation about parts of Ezra that she had not seen, and what she might do if she got the chance to. 

Sabine swallowed. A distraction. She needed one. Now. 

Thankfully, her thoughts drifted not to what the narrow trail of blue-black hairs running down into Ezra's pants might lead to, but to a small, discreet metal bottle buried at the bottom in her pack. Keeping one eye on Ezra, she rummaged around for a moment before she closed her fingers around the thing. Despite doing her best to casually unscrew the lid and take a sip, she struggled to control her expression as the drink burned its way down her throat.

Ezra sniffed at the air, blinking as he glanced over to Sabine with a raised eyebrow. 

"Judging by the fumes that bottle is giving off, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that's not water in there."

Sabine rolled her eyes, as she twirled the bottle by its neck. Never mind Mirialan or Zeltron, Ezra must've had a damn strill somewhere in his family tree if he'd scented alcohol that quickly. Maybe it was a bit dishonest of her to have stowed a decent-sized canteen of alcohol under her bunk almost from her first day on the Ghost. So far, nobody'd mentioned a thing about it. Either Kanan and Hera didn't know that she occasionally partook in the contraband booze-traffic ring with the other Phoenix Squadron personnel, or they did; and took the line of thinking that if she was mature enough to have worked as a bounty hunter, to lead assault missions and kill hundreds of Imperials with her explosives, she was probably mature enough to drink. 

"I'm nineteen, and I'm a Mandalorian. I can handle this," she took a sip from the tiny canteen, making a face at the stuff's aftertaste. 

"You certainly can," came Ezra's deadpan response. 

"Mir'sheb," she coughed, "I tasted tihaar when I was ten. Although I gotta say, this stuff hardly gives Concordian Clear a run for it- hey!"

Ezra snatched the bottle from her hands and took a swig. Immediately he lurched forward, spewing the mouthful across the sand. 

"Kriff, that's like drinking pure tibanna!" 

He wheezed, handing the bottle right back to Sabine. She shook her head a little as he spat what he could out, trying to get the rotten taste out of his mouth. 

"It's a bit of a learning curve, drinking. 'Specially this stuff. But you gotta get used to it, it's all we've got out here."

"I've drunk before, Sabine," he grumbled, "nothing THAT foul, though."

Sabine took another swallow, grimacing as it went down. Admittedly, as far as the Chopper Base vintages went, this batch was pretty bad. Still, it seemed a waste to just pour it out, after all the bartering she'd done with the cargo runners just to get the damn thing. Suddenly, an idea occurred to her. One that would deal with the rancid alc and probably distract them - well, her - from the hormonal rancor in the room.

"Never have I!" 

"Never have you what?" 

"You've seriously never played the never-have-I game?" 

Ezra just shrugged, but seemed interested all the same. 

"It's simple," she continued, scooting forward until she was sitting cross-legged in front of Ezra. 

"I'll ask if you've never done something. If I'm wrong and you haven't, I'll take a sip. But if I'm right, YOU have to take a drink. We'll get through this bottle of rot gut faster if we both drink."

"What if we've both done the thing that gets asked?"

"Easy. Both of us have done the thing, we both drink. Seem fair?"

Ezra nodded, and moved to mirror her cross-legged pose, resting his chin in one hand. 

"Fair enough. You ask first, Wren."

They passed the first few rounds of questions in a fairly relaxed fashion, asking things that they supposed that most normal teenagers would ask each other. Never have I ever snuck out late at night without asking. Never have I ever told a lie to a parent. Never have I ever stayed up past daybreak at a party or a friend's home. 

It was all fairly innocent stuff, but Sabine was starting to feel less in the mood for innocent fun. Taking a sip after Ezra correctly guessed that she had, in fact, said a swear word in public within earshot of authority figures, she hit on a properly devious question for such a game. 

"Never have I…taken something I knew would get me high." 

Ezra looked her dead in the eye, and took another swallow of the now somewhat unpleasantly warm liquor. Her eyes widened. 

"Really?" 

He shrugged, roiling the bottle between his palms.

"When you're a starving twelve-year-old, even dried-up meat in a trap that you know was salted with loth-rat poison looks good." 

Sabine winced. That was…not the story she was expecting. 

"I was okay, in case you were wondering," he added. 

"I just felt kinda weird for a few hours - sounds seemed really echoey, and I was seeing everything double and in weird colours by the time I got back to the comm tower. I ended up sleeping a really long time after, and when I woke up my head hurt. But I wasn't hungry anymore, at least. I guess it was only really deadly to loth-rats," he smiled, scrubbing at the back of his neck, as if knowingly eating deliberately poisoned food as a child was just a funny little incident and not actually horrifying. 

Sabine was no stranger to living rough, but there were times when Ezra's casual mentions of his near-feral childhood reminded her rather uncomfortably just how much hardship he'd endured before meeting her and their crew. 

"What about you, then?" 

Sabine took another sip, sighing as she passed the bottle back. 

"Ugh, I tried a lot of dumb party drugs in the undercities on Coruscant, Nar Shaddaa, Taris, places like that. Its just what you do when you hang out with that crowd, in those cities. Nothing bad happened to me under influence, praise the Manda, but still. I should've been more careful."

Ezra nodded. 

"Alright, now it's my turn for real," he thoughtfully scratched at his chin in a disturbingly Kanan-like manner. 

"Hm, seeing as we're playing dirty now. Never have I ever…kissed a girl."

Sabine hesitated a moment before taking her shot. Not because she was embarrassed about kissing girls. She didn't really want to touch on the memories of her first home that this had suddenly dredged up. Either her expression was betraying her thoughts, or Ezra's Force-emphatics hadn't yet been dulled with alcohol. 

"You don't have to explain if you don't-"

"No no, it's okay," she raised a hand to quiet him. It was an awkward memory, but somehow, she felt comfortable revealing this tiny fragment of her past to Ezra. 

"There was a girl from…before I was a bounty hunter, before I was crew on the Ghost. She came from another clan who were old allies of ours, or so I was told. I only saw them for a week or so when they came to discuss something with my m- our chieftain," she stuttered only a little. Ezra seemed not to notice. 

"I guess she must've had some kinda crush on me because she avoided me for the whole time, and then at the end just sort of grabbed my face, touched her lips on mine and then ran away back to her parents when the visit was over. Never saw her again."

Ezra chuckled. 

"And here I thought all Mando girls were as brave and daring as you."

"Not the ones whose parents shirk their oaths to- never mind," she grumbled. That was a rant for another day, or more preferably, never. 

"Then there was…well, they only gave me a name, and I never was certain if they were a boy or a girl. Maybe both or maybe neither, but I still kissed them, so. I count 'em. And then there was, well, Ketsu."

"Two-point five girls, one of whom was certified nuts and tried to kill me. Impressive," Ezra drawled sarcastically. 

"Ne'johaa, jetii'ikaad," she snapped, glaring at him. She realized that she was still clutching the bottle in her fist, and thrust it towards him, maybe a little harder than she really needed to. 

"I notice you haven't' taken YOUR shot, yet."

Ezra raised his hands in refusal, and maybe a little in defence, as he ducked to the side to avoid being punched in the shoulder. 

"Whoa, there! Also, I actually don't drink this time - I've never kissed any girls."

Sabine snorted. 

"Really. Charming street urchin with the fluffy hair and the quick tongue, convinced he's the master of the big sad pup eyes, never managed to con a pretty girl into planting one on him"

Now it was Ezra's turn to glare. 

"Look, most of the girls I ever saw were the daughters of shopkeepers and farmers who saw me stealing their produce and told their parents to watch out for the blue-haired kid."

"That…would be a bit of an obstacle," she concurred. 

"Yep. That, or their parents were Imperial officers. Not exactly a lot of safe options for a first kiss who wouldn't get me arrested on the spot," he sighed. 

She nodded in agreement. It now occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, Ezra might not be interested in kissing only girls. 

Well, there were stranger ways to find out which way someone swung their beskad then with a drinking game. She cleared her throat. 

"My turn, then. Never have I…kissed a boy." 

Ezra shook his head, still pointedly not so much as reaching for the bottle. Huh. Perhaps the third option applied to her friend. 

"Seriously? Have you just…never thought about kissing people, ever?"

"Oh no, I've thought about it - thought about it a lot, really," he said, casually as anything, "boys as much as girls. But it was just as difficult with either, back on Lothal. I just never had a chance to get to know someone who I could trust, who wouldn't get me put away or hurt."

"What about your time at the academy?"

"I thought it was one question per turn, here. And no, I did not try and smooch anyone at the school."

Now she really WAS surprised. 

"You spent that many months at an Imperial academy and didn't kiss one cute boy? Not Zare, or Jai? I mean, I've *been* to Imperial schools. I know all about what happens in the dorms after lights-out. I've seen things." 

Sabine would also know because she'd instigated quite a lot of said lights-out mischief herself, but that was something Ezra did not have to know quite yet. A girl was allowed to keep some secrets. 

"If 'what' happened while I was there, I sure wasn't invited," he leaned against the root of the coral-tree at his back. And there was that damn strip of skin again, with the happy hyperspace lane practically waving hello to her. Sabine pointedly looked away, back up to his face. 

"And excuse me if I was more focused on my mission objective and fearing for my life than on flirting with Imperials," he snorted, rolling his eyes, "and as for Zare and Jai? Kriff, I couldn't even dream of being on their level. The sooner I made my peace with that fact, the better."

"You might be cute, you don't know that." 

"And you'd know all about what guys are cute, wouldn't you, two-point-five girls kissed," he quipped. 

"Mir'sheb," she grumbled. Ezra just smirked and let his head drop back against the tree. 

For a few moments, they were quiet, the only sound being the noise of the summer insects, the convors overhead, and the faint sloshing of liquid as Sabine turned the bottle over and over in her hands. 

Whatever he might think of himself compared to others, Ezra WAS cute. Maybe not in the same way as Ketsu or Jai or the androgynous…person were, but he was. But beside that point, her game had made her realize something - okay, she'd realized it a long time before, but it took until now to really understand it. Ezra was impulsive and stubborn and at times, even downright foolish - but he was also brave and kind, not to mention funny and sarcastic in a way that had made her laugh out loud and smile more than she ever recalled before. And it didn't seem right that someone so full of spirit and life had already lost so much of his chance to experience anything like true friendships or relationships that would come with a 'normal' childhood and adolescence, the chances for he'd lost first to the Empire and now to the war. 

An…odd idea bubbled to the surface of her mind that made Sabine pause in her fidgeting. Maybe the alcohol really was affecting her judgement, embarassingly fast this time. Still, she was fairly certain that even sober she wouldn't have wavered from her course this time. Setting the bottle aside, she drew in a deep breath. 

"Ezra," she spoke quietly, "do you…want to try kissing someone?"

"Who'd you exactly have in mind?" 

She waited silently for a few moments, letting the revelation dawn on him. When he did, he started as if she'd pinched him. 

"Sabine!? Really?" 

"Well, why not? I'm here, you're here, you trust me…" 

"Yeah, I know, but," he huffed, eyes downcast as if he'd find the words he needed written plainly in the sandy ground.

"Sabine, you don't have to if…you aren't doing this just because you feel sorry for me never having kissed, are you?"

"What? No!"

To be perfectly honest, she didn't really know why she was doing this. Apart from trying to rationalize the right tangled stim-spider web of her thoughts and feelings. 

"I…just want you to know what its like. You do want to know, right?"

He fidgeted for a moment, glancing nervously off to the side as if he was looking for a way to physically escape. She realized her usual forward ways might be making him feel pressured, which she definitely did not want to do. 

"But If you don't want to, it's completely okay," she added, quietly. At this, Ezra seemed to relax, before taking a deep breath and sitting up straight, looking her in the eye. 

"Yes. Okay. You know what, yes I do want to know what it's like. But, uh, s-So how do I go about, um," he stammered, scrubbing nervously at the back of his neck, "uh, well, kissing?"

She chuckled a little. From snarky confidence to blushing sweet boy in a heartbeat. Such were the wages of Ezra Bridger. 

"Well, you have to come closer first," she motioned to the two-foot space between them. 

"Oh, right," he mumbled. Scooting forward on his knees, he first rested his hands somewhat awkwardly on his thighs, before Sabine shook her head, and taking his hands, re-arranged them so that one was held in her own hand and the other laid on her hip. For a moment she pondered where to put her other free hand, but then settled for resting it lightly on his side just shy of where his shirt still rode up, tauntingly. 

"Now just follow my lead," she murmured, and leaned forward. Obligingly, he copied her movement, even tilting his head a little so their noses wouldn't knock as they pressed close. 

As they drew closer, Sabine began to notice tiny details about Ezra's face she hadn't really had the chance to before. How the the blue of his eyes was so intense, they were actually faintly luminous; and just how long the lashes that framed them were. The deepness of the Inquisitor's scars on his cheek, now so more much faded but still distinct. And it might've just been a trick of her mind, but Sabine swore she felt the slightest rasp under her fingers as she let go of his hand to cup his jaw, and glimpsed the faint shadow of dark stubble around his mouth. 

His mouth. Right. That was what she was aiming for-

Then their lips finally touched. 

Ezra tensed at the first contact, but soon relaxed, mouth softening under the gentle pressure. His lips were firmer than any girl's, drier, a little chapped from the dry air. But they were still very nice, and Sabine found herself wanting to feel more of that new, persisted with pecks and presses, alternating between upper and lower lip. Ezra seemed to be enjoying it, as he hadn't pushed her away yet, so she pressed on. 

As he relaxed, his mouth parted ever so slightly under hers. Feeling a bit bolder, she let her tongue flick out a little against his lower lip. Ezra let out a soft noise that turned into an equally soft moan, that turned into a gasp when she daringly slipped him a little more tongue. Hesitantly, then insistently, he tried the same for her, and now it was suddenly her turn to moan. 

It seemed like an invisible ray shield that had held them apart until now had been suddenly turned off. Ezra started kissing back, with more energy, more force and even outright aggression, going so far as to dare to bite softly at her lips when she drew back a little. The arm that was shyly resting at her side now wrapped around her waist more firmly, pulling them closer together. Even more daringly he traced up the side of her neck with the other, cupping the back of her head and threading his fingers into her hair.

Fek, she could give better than that, if he wanted. She let go of his jaw, in favour of wrapping her arm around his neck, raking her fingers through his close-cropped hair, using the pressure to keep his head steady. The hand that she was simply resting at his side now moved down, boldly stroking the hard jut of his hip where it showed, and oh, she did NOT miss the little shiver he gave when she ran that hand up and under the hem of his shirt to trail on his lower back. 

For someone with no prior experience, Ezra sure did catch on fast, she thought giddily. The more she pressed him, the more confidence he seemed to gain in his own efforts, awkward as they could be.

Sabine felt lightheaded, hyper-aware of the rush of blood in her ears and the thundering pace of her heart, feeling sparks gathering under her skin where the heat of Ezra's body warmed through her clothes, and even more intensely where their lips met. With the small part of her mind that wasn't shorting out like faulty circuitry she wondered if this was some side effect of kissing a Force-sensitive - before she realized she hadn't taken a breath for almost over a full minute. 

She suddenly pulled away, panting a little. Looking up, she found that Ezra was flushed, his eyes wide, and he was breathing just as hard as she was. 

"That was…really, really nice," he gasped, an awkward little smile beginning to spread across his face. "You're pretty great at that, you know?" 

"You were pretty good yourself," she replied, only a little less breathlessly. 

"Only pretty good? Guess I need more practice." Sabine couldn't help but giggle. It had been too long since she'd done anything so fun, and by the looks of it, it was the same for Ezra. 

Suddenly, a look of uncertainty clouded his face. 

"So, uh," he stumbled a moment, hesitating on his next word.

"Does kissing...change us?"

"What do you mean?" 

Ezra huffed, letting his hands fall away from her, back into his lap where he started to fidget. 

"I mean... Sabine, you're my best friend. And now we've kissed, and I liked it, I liked it so much, I kinda wanna do it again, but- but I don't know if this makes us like… well, like Kanan and Hera are. And, well, uh... I don't know if I'm ready to do that just yet."

Oh. Sabine hadn't quite considered this particular consequence. Inexperienced as Ezra was, the poor guy was probably now just confused as all get-out, no matter how much he'd just enjoyed his first make-out session. It was time for damage control. She shifted closer beside him, motioning for him to sit back with her against the stony outcrop of the coral-tree's root. 

"Ezra, it doesn't have to change a thing," she began. 

He seemed to perk up a bit at that. 

"Really?"

She nodded, and reached over to take his hand, lacing their fingers together. 

"Yep. We can stay best friends, and leave it at that. We never have to do ...this sort of thing again, if you dont want to. But if you want to kiss me again, you can."

And maybe even do more, if ever you ask, she thought to herself. 

"Does that sound good?"

Ezra glanced down, unconsciously doing that chin-stroke motion again with his free hand as he turned her words over in his mind. 

"I know you're sort of the more experienced one, and you probably know more about this stuff than I do, but I wanna ask - is that a normal thing?" he asked. Sabine smirked. 

"Ezra. We're fighting on the front lines of a galaxy-wide civil war when we should be going to school and annoying the neighbours with loud music. I think we left normal behind a hyperspace jump and a half ago." 

Ezra couldn't help but smile back at her, a real smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes just enough. 

"Well, when you put it that way, it doesn't seem weird." 

"So," she asked, "is that a yes?"

Ezra's response was to clasp both her hands in his, drawing them close to his chest in a gesture so sincere as to almost be funny, if it hadn't also sincerely made something in her own chest flutter a little. 

"Yes. Yes, Sabine; I will stay your best friend - who kisses you sometimes."

"Nice," she said simply, because really, what else was there that she could say. Glancing down. The forgotten bottle of hooch sat all but empty by her knees, nothing but a last couple mouthfuls inside. 

"I guess we could drink to this," she murmured. 

Ezra reached up, gently turning her face back towards his and leaning in a little.

"How about we kiss on it, instead?"

Sabine felt a grin working its way across her own face. Eager, eager boy, she thought. 

"Well, you yourself did say it - you need to practice."


End file.
